As I get the different parts of the yard/garden respectable, my plan is to post pictures. The plants aren’t in full bloom yet, so I’ll have to try to do this again later in the summer for comparison’s sake.
Up first is a pic of the front of the house. Nothing much going on here. Actually, I haven’t even mulched around the trees, but you can’t tell since the photo is from a distance. We have two Japanese plum trees and two oak trees in the front. Years ago, one of our Japanese plums was damaged in a storm, so we replaced it with another. That is why the one tree is so much larger than the other one. The replacement tree isn’t growing very quickly , so I wouldn’t be surprised if both of them end up getting replaced down the road.
The hedges growing around the house are yews. And, you can’t see it, but there’s a flower box full of mint growing against the house. I had to remove the mint from my herb garden years ago because it was taking over everything.
This is a closer pic of where the dogs go out (off of the side porch). I mulched that area a couple of years ago because most of the grass was dead. The mulch has worked out surprisingly well. It doesn’t get tracked into the house and it looks better than having patchy grass out there. Plus, all the less lawn for Brian to mow!
In other gardening news, I took today off so that I could work outside. This is the first nice day we’ve had in over a week. I managed to catch a few hours of weeding before a storm blew in (with massive amounts of hail, I might add). The storm caused a bunch of sand to wash out of my garden path. I just got that straightened out the other week and planted some dwarf thyme in the cracks, but it didn’t have time to take root yet, so it’s a mess out there. I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.
The storm also ruined some coleus plants. I had them sitting under the shop door roof, but the wind blew them onto the patio and they suffered some hail damage. Hopefully I won’t have to run to the store for more plants. And, it’s a good thing that I didn’t pot them and put them out today, like I considered doing.
All in all a good day for planting even if it did rain.